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- Volume 1, Issue 2, 2018
Journal of Science & Popular Culture - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2018
Volume 1, Issue 2, 2018
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Hairdressing in space: Depiction of gender in science books for children
Authors: Elizabeth F. Caldwell and Susan Jane WilbrahamAbstractStereotypes in the media both reflect and perpetuate the notion that science is a masculine pursuit. The aim of the current study is to explore whether such stereotypes extend to imagery within children’s science books. To determine the extent of stereotypes in gender representation, both quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted. Results demonstrated that females were under-represented in images across the books surveyed. Analyses of images of adults demonstrated under-representation of women in both physics and mathematics books, but images of children showed no significant difference between genders. Analyses of the target age of the children’s books revealed that books targeted at older children contained fewer images of adult females. Qualitative visual analyses revealed that books about space exploration trivialized women’s expertise, diminished their perceived technical competence, failed to acknowledge their contribution or presence and represented them in a manner that suggested that they were passive, lower status and superficial. Books about science that are currently available to children in libraries are not balanced in terms of their representation of gender. More balanced imagery in children’s science books of women actively participating in scientific occupations would help to demonstrate that careers in these areas are meaningful, fulfilling and achievable for women.
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Staging science on TV: Richard Hammond’s Invisible Worlds, Richard Hammond’s Miracles of Nature and Wild Weather with Richard Hammond
By Nigel MorrisAbstractThis article comprises two distinct parts. The first surveys the problems and aspirations associated with television representations of science. This historical overview contextualizes the second part, which extrapolates from textual analysis of three closely related, high-profile, peak-time BBC series. It seeks to demonstrate that, despite massive efforts and a shift in attitudes within the academy towards dissemination of knowledge over the last third of a century, many associated with initiatives in Public Understanding (or Awareness) of Science and Public Engagement in Science and Technology, there has been little progress in how scientific matters are represented. Examination of extracts from each series are used to argue that televised science draws upon the twin histories and discourses of the illustrated lecture and Victorian stage illusionism, each of which presented spectacle and sensationalism. Attention to the programmes’ construction and implicit informing ideologies reveals their divergence from the expository mode that they ostensibly claim to belong to. While many Public Understanding efforts appear to involve a long-standing hermetic debate between scientists and journalists predicated on outmoded communications theories, textual analysis demonstrates that relatively unsophisticated television studies approaches may yet offer worthwhile contributions.
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Examining how scientists ‘do’ gender: An analysis of the representations of hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity on The Big Bang Theory
More LessAbstractThe television sitcom The Big Bang Theory (2007–present) portrays the lives of a group of highly intelligent but socially awkward scientists. The show consistently attracts an audience of approximately fifteen million viewers each week and thus offers a powerful opportunity to examine how scientists are represented in popular fiction. Drawing on sociological gender theories, this article examines episodes from the first seven seasons of the show to explore how it depicts scientists as individuals who fail to live up to standards of hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity. Implications of such imagery for public understandings of scientists and for issues of gender inequality are discussed.
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‘As if eavesdropping on actual filming’: The origins of the wildlife making-of documentary genre
More LessAbstractThe wildlife making-of documentary (MOD) genre has become a routine appendage to most prestige natural history series. However, the genre is a fairly recent one. The first attempt at producing a wildlife MOD was the half-hour long Unarmed Hunter in 1963. The first wildlife MOD accompanying a natural history programme was 1984’s The Making of the Living Planet. In between these two films, the televising of natural history became a profession revolving around the technical mastery of the filmmaking apparatus. Looking at the genesis of the wildlife MOD genre from the early 1960s to the early 1980s, this article examines how natural history broadcasters enroled science and scientists in their effort to carve a cultural space for the televising of natural history out of the one occupied by amateur natural history. In so doing, they promoted a definition of filmmaking as a means to produce original knowledge of the natural world.
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